Make Your mark
by sweet nothing
Summary: Gaara has a moment of contemplation after his Chuunin exam prelim battle with Lee, and makes a decision. Rating for strangeness and dark themes.


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I just borrow the characters and some of the situations to amuse myself and, hopefully, you too.

A/N: This ficlet was spawned of my more cerebral review of Naruto manga volumes 10 and 11 (hence where some of the quotes came from). Nobody gets pummeled by OMG LIFE GATE OPEN!Lee and then smashed into a cement floor hard enough to leave a crater the size of a king-sized bed and walks away without some tender spots, no matter how awesomly useful your sand gourd is. And Gaara was pretty twitchy and pained-looking as he crushed Lee's left limbs all to hell, don't you think? And then I started thinking, now why would Gaara wait almost a month to decide to go back and finish Lee off? Why not just do it? As shown by his speedy murder of Dosu, it's not like Gaara's going to win the Most Discreet Ninja award. Plus... I just love dealing with Pre-Repentant Gaara. 3

Please enjoy and review. I live on comments.

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Make Your Mark

Gaara sat in the semi-gloom, aching. He stared at the polished hardwood floor of his inn room. The futon might as well have been a slab of granite. He sat and ached and stewed over the day's events.

_"That...should've hurt."_

Looking on in rage and abject wonder as his sand shell lay in a crater in the ground, crumbling. If he hadn't managed to escape that...

_"Right! Now I can move freely!"_

The sand shield not being able to keep up once the weights had been dropped; sand rising and falling like small geizers as it rushed to protect him and failed. The feeling of a fist hammering him, a heel smashing against the side of his face. Physical pain, for the first time in his life. The sand armour had softened the blows, but not nullified them entirely...

_"Secondary Lotus!"_

The sound of air whistling by as he was thrown through the air, pummeled from all directions. Bandages wrapped around his waist, jerking him upwards into that split second of excruciating, crunching, tenderizing pain. Then straight into the ground again. Even the Sand hadn't been able to absorb all that impact.

_My defenses are failing... Is he even human...?_

He was, of course, human. Rock Lee... the way his bones splintered and shattered, the way his flesh and muscles turned to pulp under the lethal carress of the Sand... that was very human. That scream... despite himself, Gaara shuddered. That scream of pain had been glorious. And through the pain, the rage, the sand that skittered up around him in the crater, that scream had reached him. He had felt so _alive_.

Gaara of the Desert no longer felt alive. He felt tired, full of muted rage and he was sore all over. Rock Lee had hurt him... and survived.

Feeling cold and unsatisfied, Gaara's eyes flickered up to the window and the dark night outside punctured by stars. Konohagakure was very green, even at night. Very fresh and vital. And somewhere in that green darkness, in Konoha's hospital, Rock Lee lay in critical care, his left arm and leg crushed beyond all repair. Gaara's mark on him for life.

Rock Lee's mark on Gaara would fade. The bruises that had blossomed in the last few hours pointed out to Gaara where the armour had failed him. They were yellow-brown-blue-black-purple and ugly, but they were temporary. They would fade.

Homely little prince charming... Gaara's eyes slipped closed, he breathed deeply and let himself fall back onto the futon. His back tingled, his shoulderblades, small wings of purple now, complained. What a battle. "Rock Lee..." he murmured to the small room, and his hand slipped under his shirt to touch the giant bruise hammered onto his abdomen. His fingers gently prodded and pressed the tender skin, feeling out sore spots. This pain wasn't so bad. Beside, he had given just as good as he got. More so.

That _scream_...!

Gaara's hand slid out of his shirt and up to his forehead. It was cool against his fingertips. He pressed his palm against the kanji carved into the skin there; the mark the world had made on him.

_"To make the pain go away, you must receive love."_

It had taken years for Gaara to realize that love was a lie. A word used for when a person was too weak to justify their existence on their own. But Love had made its mark on Gaara, nonetheless. Love was Yashamaru's mark. His father's mark, and his mother's, as well.

_Why are you helping him?_

That moment when Rock Lee had lay unconscious and the match had ended... when Lee's sensei had interfered. The entire room had looked at Gaara with such shock, such disgust and horror. And at Lee with such concern. Such compassion. Rock Lee, with his bowl cut and his huge eyebrows and ridiculous green jumpsuit and weights... he was so loved. Why?

_"He's my loveable, precious protige."_

That scream.

_"I'm pleased I have the chance to fight you so soon."_

That scream. Rock Lee would never forget him. Never. He would remember Gaara of the Desert forever.

_"Please, don't rush things."_

Don't rush things, Gaara repeated to himself. Don't rush things. Wait until the bruises are gone, then finish what you started. He made you feel so alive, and he's not even dead yet. Imagine how you'll feel, killing him. Imagine it. Think of how alive you'll feel then, with the sand suffocating him.

You've made your mark, a voice inside Gaara's head whispered. You've made your mark on him... now make your move.


End file.
